“Today’s evolving workforce is a portfolio of full-time employees, contract and freelance talent, and, increasingly, talent with no formal ties to a company at all. People move from role to role and across organizational boundaries more freely than ever. Global markets and products are driven by accelerating innovation and growing scale, and they demand talent… Continue reading
Date archives "July 2014"
Video: Friederike Habermann on the Commons Economy (Ecommony)
Interview conducted by Alain Ambrosi on the occasion of the Economics of the Commons conference. Watch the video here: (if the right video does not show, because of a technical issue with the playlist, click directly on the link below, or item 4 in the series) http:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=i3jeKros4Yk&list=PLiO9RvnsUfkatF08AS-5t1PJSU35khJ3S&index=4
Book of the Day: A Reader for Digital Currency Design
* Book: Alternative Currency Adaptor, the DYNDY Reader for Digital Currency Design. Jaromil and DYNDY, 2013 A description excerpted from Jaromil: “After a selection of the best pieces that we have humbly put together to date and together with a most welcome contribution from Prof. Adam Arvidsson, the result is AC-Adaptor or Alternative Currency Adaptor,… Continue reading
Video: Charlotte Hess on the Need for a Commons Research Agenda
Interview with Charlotte Hess conducted by Alain Ambrosi on the occasion of the Economics of the Commons conference. Watch the video here: (the wrong video is likely shown, due to a technical mistake in the playlist , so click on the link directly or click on item 5 in the play list) http:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=jkKAMh_u-3k&list=PLiO9RvnsUfkYR3nlESkj73h8CLnDhh2kY&index=5
P2P Trendfest (1): Rural Coliving
Excerpted from Cat Johnson: “What if coworking was a slower, more spacious affair that offered a respite from the everyday grind and included meals, walks and intentional collaboration? What if, rather than being in an urban setting, the coworking space was in a small, rural town? And what if you lived, temporarily at least, in… Continue reading
Enric Duran on shared and disobedient crowdfunding platform networks
We’ve recently featured Coopfunding, an Open-Sourced crowdfunding platform designed to “…promote the financing of projects with a social, self managed and cooperative nature.” Today we present a guest article by Enric Duran, one of the developers behind Coopfunding and its parent-project, the Catalan Integral Cooperative, explaining the reasons that led to the creation of Coopfunding. This article was… Continue reading
Video: Tomislav Tomasevic on Commons-Based Political Struggles in Central and Eastern Europe
Interview conducted by Frédéric Sultan with Tomislav Tomasevic on the occasion of the Economics and the Commons Conference in Berlin. Watch the video here: (the wrong video is likely shown below, due to a technical issue with the playlist, click on the link directly, or on item 3 of the playlist) http: // www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSMv1ZCxIYw&list=PLiO9RvnsUfkYR3nlESkj73h8CLnDhh2kY&index=3 or… Continue reading
Evgeny Morozov on the dangers of Algorithmic Regulation
In shifting the focus of regulation from reining in institutional and corporate malfeasance to perpetual electronic guidance of individuals, algorithmic regulation offers us a good-old technocratic utopia of politics without politics. Disagreement and conflict, under this model, are seen as unfortunate byproducts of the analog era – to be solved through data collection – and… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Spreadable Media
* Book: Spreadable Media. Henry Jenkins (with Sam Ford and Joshua Green), 2013. Excerpted from a review by Tiziano Bonini: “The book’s basic idea is that we are facing a changing in the paradigm of the form in which the cultural contents circulate within a society. It is emerging a hybrid model of circulation, the… Continue reading
Video: Primavera De Filippi on Ethereum
Very clear explanation on the potential of distributed governance through the bitcoin protocol, the good and the bad: “Ethereum is a contract validating and enforcing system based on a distributed public ledger such as the one implemented by the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The system allows for the management of complex distributed autonomous organizations, which raises questions… Continue reading
Towards A Commons Approach for Developing Infrastructure
* Essay: Sharing Design Rights: A Commons Approach for Developing Infrastructure. by Nuno Gil and Carliss Y. Baldwin From the Executive Summary: “Traditionally, a commons is a natural resource that gives rise to the problem of collective action: Individuals who act alone without consideration for others will arrive at outcomes that are bad for all…. Continue reading
Essay of the Day: A Critique of Posthumanism and Transhumanism
* Article: Futurological Discourses and Posthuman Terrains. By Dale Carrico. Existenz 8/2 (2013), 47-63 From the Abstract: “Seven basic distinctions seem to me key to grasping futurology as both a discursive and a sub-cultural phenomenon: (1) technologies and technology: the actual constellation of artifacts and techniques in the diversity of their stakes and specificities as… Continue reading
Charles Eisenstein and Prof. Margrit Kennedy – changes in the money system
“Why is money so important in our life? Money is designed to always grow. It is an eco to the scientific program, to master the world. In the last four years people were looking out more than ever for new solutions in our economic system. The american author Charles Eisenstein and the german money expert… Continue reading
What Does a Post-Growth Economy Look Like?
No respectable person in American politics dares to question the virtue of economic growth even though it is increasingly clear that life on Earth will collapse if current patterns of extraction and consumption continue. So what is the responsible path forward? It was exciting that the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. decided to… Continue reading
Various Dimensions of the Concept of Common Good
Excerpted from François Houtart: “The notion of Common Good has known lately a new interest. For some it is the renewal of an old idea and the opportunity of giving to conservative forces of society the appearance of a modern approach. For others it is a way of coming out of a stereotyped vocabulary used… Continue reading
A new start for the Free Knowledge Institute and the Free Technology Academy
The Free Knowledge Institute is a hub connecting networks and communities in multiple domains facilitating and enabling the study, sharing and collaborative development of free knowledge and free technologies for a socially just, free knowledge society (disclaimer: I’m on the FKI board since last September). The FKI is happy to announce a reboot of its… Continue reading